In general, laundry dryers are popular home appliances that hold wet laundry inside a drum, and dry the laundry by applying hot, dry air to the laundry.
In detail, a laundry dryer employs a motor-driven drum to tumble laundry placed therein, while blowing hot air through the drum to dry the laundry. Dryers are divided into two basic types: exhaust-type dryers that expel the hot air that has absorbed moisture from the laundry and condensing dryers that use condensers to condense the absorbed moisture from the hot air and then recirculate the hot air within the dryer.
The above laundry dryers have a door disposed at their front portions for providing access into the laundry drum, and a lint filter installed on the door.
Specifically, lint and foreign materials from the laundry is blown around in the drum during the drying process. When the hot air containing lint and other materials in the drum passes through the door filter, the lint and foreign materials are trapped by the filter. Such a lint filter installed in a door is usually held in a filter case.
Here, when installing the lint filter in the filter case, it is important that the peripheral edges of the filter are positioned firmly against the case in order to prevent lint from passing through the loose gaps and escaping out of the dryer. However, laundry dryers according to the prior art do not have structures that position their door filters firmly against their housings, and thus, a portion of the lint in their drums bypasses the filters and escapes out from the dryers.
Also, in the case of condensing dryers, lint that bypasses the lint filter circulates within the dryer, and accumulates on a fan or heater. When this occurs, lint can accumulate on a fan shaft, preventing the fan from rotating, or accumulate on a heater and be ignited by the heater to cause a fire.